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Levi-Strauss, Claude - The Other Face of the Moon
Identifier
014305
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Other Face of the Moon - Claude Lévi-Strauss, Junzo Kawada
I learned that the Japanese scale [of music], though pentatonic as elsewhere in the Far East, does not resemble any other. It relies on an alteration of minor seconds and major thirds, that is, on intervals formed, respectively, of a semitone and of two whole tones, with a possible alteration of a whole tone on the fifth degree. Through that close set opposition between large and small intervals, the Japanese scale admirably lends itself to expressing movements of the heart.